Mercury Air Cargo Thrives in Face of Infrastructure Challenges

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Mercury Air Cargo Thrives in Face of Infrastructure Challenges

8/22/2019

“Mercury Air Cargo faces significant challenges due to compressed space at LAX, yet has been very successful in the past few months and continuing to grow”, said John Peery, President and Chief Operating Officer, pointing out , “It’s quite exciting and quite draining at times. We are utilizing the limited space very effectively.”

LAX is currently going through a $17 billion expansion on the passenger side. This has included improvements such as a people mover, remote check-in terminals, consolidated rental car buildings, and more. This has created havoc on the roads and infrastructure.

Much of the remodeling impacted Mercury Air Cargo’s operating capacity, so LAWA offered them a 1960s-era building with 25,000 square feet. Although much smaller than their current 33,000 sqft. building, the company took the facility and moved a few clients over to it while improving the cargo flow in the building.

Simultaneously, the company successfully bid on another cargo building at LAX. Mercury was able to retain the three incumbent customers Alaska Air, WestJet, and Cargolux, taking over on August 1 and oversaw this additional 50,000 square feet with sixty-five employees.

“I’m very proud of our management and staff that allow us to be so distinguished in our field – with our company handling 28% of the volume that goes through LAX, making us by far the largest cargo handler at LAX,” says Peery. “

Mercury Air Cargo had the opportunity to bid for a large international air carrier and will learn in November if they were successful. If so, Mercury Air Cargo will handle over 30% of LAX’s volume.

Lastly, Peery is pleased to be moving toward an automated import delivery system. Air cargo handling is a very labor-intensive business which becomes more difficult with increasing wages and a low unemployment rate. So, they decided to automate with CargoSprint. When completed, hopefully October 1, the automation will allow for import wait times to equal export wait times (currently imports wait three times longer). This system will provide many benefits to the import community that currently do not exist. “We are changing a mentality that has existed since I started 48 years ago. We have to be revolutionary in business, and Mercury Air Cargo is leading the way with automated import deliveries,” stated Peery.

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